In code division multiple access (CDMA) communication systems, unnecessary and excessive transmission by a user may cause interference to other users in addition to reducing the system capacity. The communication services in a cellular communication system may include wireless radio transmission of digitized speech, still or moving images, text messages and other types of data. For providing such services, a base station may attempt to communicate to a mobile station on a traffic channel at a data rate that is most recently requested by the mobile station. The mobile station may make the data rate request on a data rate control channel. The mobile station may communicate continuously a data rate control information to the base station in every time slot on the data rate control channel. The base station, however, at different times may not have any data for transmission to the mobile station on the traffic channel. As such, transmission of the data rate control information on the data rate control channel by the mobile station may be excessive and unnecessary at different times.
To this end as well as others, there is a need for a method and apparatus for efficient communications of the data rate control information in a communication system.